Butterfly Marketing, Mike Filsaime, And Why I’m Not Big On Either.

Like many of you, I am constantly looking for ways to improve the traffic and profitability of my various sites. In my search for information I come across many different products, people and approaches. Recently I got on a list where I receive information from an “Internet Marketing Master” (<-These are their words not mine), Mike Filsaime. His main marketing approach/product is something he calls ‘Butterfly Marketing’. The idea is that you create a powerful marketing campaign that has a massive urgency to it, like “All this, for this great price, limited quantity, for the next 24 hours”. You get caught up in the hype and urgency of the pitch, that you find yourself almost reflexively buying the product, regardless of your need for it.

Though the marketing principle is seemingly effective, I don’t think that it is a system that has much integrity. For example I received an email with a video link for one of his “SPECIAL” offers, after watching the Butterflied video, with the unbeatable irresistible offer, I was directed to a page where I could make my purchase. Now right at the outset of the video Mike tells me that by now the offer is probably sold out and when I get to the offer page it shows me with a countdown clock there is only 36 minutes left. I am not the overly impulsive type so I left the site. A few hours later I went to the site again, not to buy the product but more to check on a curiosity. I checked the site and it had told me that the offer had run out but I could get on a list. Still curious I used a different computer (hence a different IP) and went back to the site, and lo and behold the site showed me the 36 minute countdown again. Hmmmm!

For the time being lets give Filsaime the benefit of the doubt and pretend that there is value to his products, the fact that deceptive pressures are used to sell the product is something that does not sit well with me. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have sales or special offers, I am just saying do them with integrity and honesty. If it is 24hrs then make it 24hrs. As a side note don’t be drawn into thinking that there is a limited quantity of a down loadable product. If Mike Filsaime is selling a down loadable product for $300 and tells you that there is a limited quantity of only 100, do you honestly think that if another 900 people ( $270,000) want to buy it he wont sell it to them.

Now for the value of the actual products. In this video Filsaime was pushing a new widget that he designed. As I was watching, I was thinking that BlogRush (you can see the widget on the right side of my blog) has the same thing, and its free. In his savvyness Mike mentioned the same fact. What was the benefit of his product over BlogRush? You get his prefab site and marketing tools with it.

Now if you do a little research you will find that although BlogRush gets you tons of coverage, it brings in very little traffic. Likewise Filsaimes widget will have the same results. What is the benefit of his widget? That you market it for him and he has at least two of his links showing every time the widget appears on someones page. He makes money selling you the package and he makes money from people occasionally clicking on his ads in the widget. If you do get any traffic through the widget it will be a minuscule fraction of the traffic he gets.

Most of the product that these people sell for hundreds of dollars can be found for free. Google has many free tools in their Adwords and Adsence programs. I use 1&1 for hosting and their inexpensive hosting packages come with plenty of free optimization and evaluation tools which can be upgraded for a small cost (and without urgency).

Now what about the “Testimonials”? Most of the testimonials are by people pitching Filsaime’s products, you don’t see many testimonials of others that used the system to market something else. If you can’t use it to sell your own products it does not have solid value, and as I said before, I don’t think the system has integrity, so why would you want to deceive your customers.

As a final note, I don’t want to create the impression of absolutes. Even if you are being Butterfly Marketed, the product might have value. If you think something might have value, then take sometime to think about it, see if it will really help YOU. It will still be there tomorrow. As proof, in the past week I have gotten at least 5 emails from Mike Filsaime selling me the same “limited time”, “already sold out” offer. Needless to say the offer is not something that I want.

My recommendation is to make sure YOU are controlling YOUR decisions, don’t let somebody else manipulate YOU.

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